Spain Moves On Law to Give Broad Powers To Catalonia

By RENWICK McLEAN

Published: March 31, 2006

After hours of occasionally bitter debate, the lower house of Parliament agreed Thursday to grant broad new powers of self-government to the wealthy northeastern region of Catalonia.

Supporters said the law would keep the restive region content within Spanish borders for a generation, but critics said it threatened to fracture the country.

The measure, approved by a vote of 189 to 154, would allow Catalonia to keep more of its tax money, to require residents to learn the Catalan language and to exercise greater control over issues like immigration policy.

Passage of the measure is at least a short-term victory for Prime Minister Jos?uis Rodr?ez Zapatero, who invested his personal standing in winning the vote.

But the victory will test his conviction that negotiations and compromise are the best way to settle the most volatile issue in Spanish politics -- the regional demands for autonomy or independence that in the past have led to potent separatist movements, terrorism and civil war.

The bill now will go to the Senate for a series of nonbinding votes and then return to the lower house of Parliament for final approval, which is considered all but a formality. It also must be approved by Catalan voters in a referendum that is tentatively scheduled for the summer.

Before the vote, Mar?Teresa Fern?ez de la Vega, the deputy prime minister, said the measure represented a new path for mending Spain's regional divisions. ''The only way to build a better, more tolerant, unified and stronger Spain is to integrate our diversity,'' she said.

But Mariano Rajoy, leader of the center-right Popular Party, the main opposition group in Parliament, said the initiative was ''the beginning of the end of the state as it was designed by the Spanish people in 1978,'' when the post-Franco Constitution was approved. He demanded that the legislation be submitted to Spain's constitutional court.

Some legal scholars said the measure might have trouble gaining approval by the court. ''The spirit of the statute describes a quasi-sovereign nation,'' said Pedro Gonz?z-Trevijano, rector of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid and a professor of Spanish constitutional law.

A central issue, he said, was the measure's declaration that Catalonia's powers of self-government emanate solely from the Catalan people. That, he said, could allow Catalonia to claim that ''it has the authority to operate outside the framework of the Constitution, and that it is entitled to self-determination.''

In Catalonia, critics of the bill said it gave too little autonomy to the region, not too much, and they took issue with government claims that the law would quell Catalan demands for more self-government for decades.

''This is not an agreement that will resolve the issue for long,'' said Ferr?Requejo, a professor of political science at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He said politicians in Catalonia had already begun discussing strategies for obtaining further autonomy.